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I was finding myself in a weird position yesterday. I was rooting against my own starting pitcher. When a Ranger would catch the ball, I’d get mad. When Park would strike someone out, I’d be irritated. In fact, I got four and two thirds innings of that, as Chan Ho Park pitched well again for the second outing in a row. Only one of the 3 runs Park gave up were earned (thanks to Soriano). All told Park’s line was 4 hits, 3R, 1ER, 4K, OBB. No walks again. It’s even been a couple of outings since Park plunked someone with a HBP. The scary thing is if Park does this two more times in a row, people might start to believe he’s figured it out, and I just can’t bring myself to do that. I think it’s a given he’ll make the club out of camp, but how long will it last? Even if he does pitch well into the season, no one will believe it. They’ll wait for the other shoe to drop, for him to walk 5, give up 4 home runs, and hit 3, and then people will say “The real Chan Ho is back”. The three years before were an enigma. He was expected to pitch well, and didn’t. Now he’s NOT expected to pitch well (or even keep his job according to a lot of folks), so he goes and is having a fairly decent spring. I’m scared.
Other folks who aren’t doing what they’re supposed to are Laynce Nix, who still hasn’t gotten it going. He’s never really been a “tear it up and bat 340 hitter”, so I wonder how he’ll recover from his slow spring. Alfonso Soriano, who possibly still could be hurt, either physically, or can’t bring his mind to bear on getting past that mental barrier folks need to get past to get back to where they were playing wise. He’s got two hits out of about 5,000 at bats this spring, and he made two errors yesterday. Neither Nix nor Soriano are doing very well at all this spring, for whatever reason. With Gary Matthews doing really well, if Nix doesn’t get it together soon, he’s likely to find himself on the bench, or in AAA. Soriano will stay simply because of his contract, but if he keeps doing this into May, we might find Ian Kinsler at second, or someone else entirely. Who knows?
Anyway, about this game – we had a few longballs in the third (Young, Barajas) to give us a 3-2 lead in the third. The Angels tied it up in the 5th, and it stayed that way until extra innings, where we did what we usually do. Give up a couple in the top of the 10th, and then don’t score any ourselves. RA Dickey pitched the 10th, and was the losing pitcher, having given up both of those runs.
We play the Brewers on Sunday afternoon, hopefully we can pick up a win, something that has been hard to come by lately. Be nice to have a win going into our lone scheduled off day on Monday.
You can view my full update for this game here.

I’m back with an update – sort of. I posted pages for the last three games (including today’s). However, I haven’t had the time to add commentary of my own, so I’m just posting them w/o that.
On Wednesday we beat the Diamondbacks pretty well 9-2. We then lost to the Giants by the score of 7-5, and today to the Padres 4-2.
Overall, we’re now 6-11 for the spring.

I unfortunately am too busy to create a page for this game. We won the game, but that’s about all I have time to write today. :)
If I find some time this evening, I might back create one, but for now, I don’t think I will have the time to do this. Today’s game might also get shafted. Gotta do the paycheck stuff first, ya know.

That winning streak of one is over. We lost the second of two split squad games on Tuesday to the Brewers by the score of 6-4. This game was on Rangers radio, but I didn’t get to hear much but the end of it. As my wife is now exactly 4 weeks from delivery, I’m trying not to spend time away from her if she wants to do something, or if she needs something, so boring her with a spring training radio broadcast wasn’t what I had in mind for the evening. We watched some of The Incredibles, which came out on DVD Tuesday.
I don’t have the time to write anything on Wednesday, as I’ve got a pile of work staring me in the face, so I’ll just let folks read the rest of the page update I have.

The Rangers finally won again for the first time in almost a week. We won the first of the day’s two games. This was the split squad game against the Rockies. We won 1-0 in 10 innings.
I sat here at work refreshing this page. I kept seeing the zeroes pile up in the line score. Got past the ninth, and I wondered how long they would continue a split squad game in extra innings. It was a fast mover, going 2:45 for 10 innings, but there were virtually zero runs, and no TV to bog things down, so that’s probably why these things move much faster in spring training. :)
Anyway, even before I saw a box score (which I still haven’t seen as I write this), I knew it would be all about pitching. 10 innings, and only one total run, there was definitely some pitching going on.
RicRod continues to show he is picking up right where he left off when he got hurt last summer. He went 4.2 innings gave up no runs, and just three hits. Ron Mahay & Erasmo Ramirez followed, and between the two of ’em, they pitched 4.1 innings. No runs, just two hits (both by Eraser). The final frame was pitched by Keith Stamler (a name I don’t recognize), and he got the win. Overall, 10IP, 0R, 5H, 6K, 5BB. I suppose the five walks are the worst thing, but we didn’t get burnt by ’em.
Offensively, obviously not much happened, either. He had a total of 9 hits. Only one player (Joaquin Arias, 2) had more than 1 hit. I would have loved to have seen this game myself, this must have been a fun one to behold.
You can view my full update for this game here.

The Rangers dropped their fifth in a row to the Angels this afternoon by the score of 10-6. It started out OK. In fact, it started out GREAT! Chan Ho Park pitched four innings, gave up no runs, one hit (which was a bunt single), and had two strikeouts. He even didn’t have his random hit by pitch he always seems to have. But I hate it when Park does this, because we all know he’ll be right back to the old ChoP we know and love and give up 600 runs the next time out. I’m tired of being teased like this by him. He might even put out a good performance next time. But it won’t last. Let’s cut him now. Put someone else in there.
The next two pitchers actually kept us in the game. Carlos Almanzar and Vlad Nunez gave up no earned runs, although Nunez had an unearned one. But then not only did the wheels fall off the wagon, but the wagon itself fell apart. Jason Stanridge gave up 7 runs (6ER) in his inning of work, and Kameron Loe gave up two runs (1ER) of his own following that. The wagon destroying 8th inning had the Angels had the first 9 batters reach without an out; they sent a total of 14 that inning. The Rangers comitted 3 errors, and gave up a total of 9 runs. We were winning the game 4-1 at that point, but were losing 10-4 at the end of the inning. This is the point where people who write about the team say that “it’s just spring training, and these guys aren’t going to be here come April anyway”. That’s true, but man, does a 9 spot look UGLY up there.
Offensively, we had a total of 12 hits. Rod Barajas went 3 for 3 with a double & Adrian Gonzalez was 2 for 4 and an RBI to lead the charge. No home runs, but Hank Blalock had a triple. Mike Young also had a double and two RBI’s. The offense was mostly scattered around.
We’re now down five in a row to 4-8.
You can view my complete update for this game here.

My wife and I were doing some stuff together yesterday, as we won’t have much time for that in a few weeks once the baby arrives. So we’re driving around, and I turned on the XM baseball schedule, and they said the Rangers were on Channel 181. I turned there, and it was Eric! I had forgotten the Rangers were on the radio. So we listened while we were driving around.
I tuned in when we were up 2-0. Then I got to hear Richard Hidalgo hit his second home run, and I got to hear Alfonso Soriano finally get his first hit of the spring – a home run as well. So we were up 5-0. Made a stop, and when we came out, it had gone to 5-3. Uh-oh. As we were driving around, we lost the lead due to some ineffective pitching in the middle innings. We picked up one in the bottom of the 8th to make it 7-6, but we couldn’t get the important tying run across the plate. Wasn’t really a see-saw game, as the lead only changed hands once. Seemed more like a “club the other guy” game. We scored 5. They scored 7, and then we had one late as a final whimper.
Pitching wise, Chris Young did really well his first three innings, not giving up anything. If I’m not mistaken, his entire line came in inning 4, when he likely ran out of gas, which isn’t too common in the first third of spring training games. Travis Hughes came on and poured more gasoline on the fire, giving up 4 runs in his one inning of work. The remaining pitchers we used (Brocail, Montero, Shouse) kept things at bay, not giving up anything else, but we couldn’t come all the way back.
That led us to our fourth spring loss in a row. Last win was last Wednesday against the Cubs. Hopefully Mondays’ game against the Angels will be different. :)
You can view my recap page here.